Finally got this started

[Relthar]

I finally added the page templates for the Council of Wyrms game to Realms Gate. I even have a first draft of character creation (under 3rd edition) and a characters list. All the stats at the moment are 2nd edition, but class/levels will be updated to 3.5E and other information will be added over the few months as time allows.

[Relthar]

Rogue's Gallery in basic list form is up now. Talk about NPCs all over the place. I think thgis was the first campaign where I had written out a cast of characters knowing that I would forget most of them if they weren't written somewhere.

[Jona]

There's a issue of Dragon Mag out right now that has levels for dragons, and it looks pretty good. Admittedly this was from a 5 minute glance.

Charles, Vince, since you guys have more access to the CoW setting stuff, how does it compare to the 3.5 advancements and letting people play as a 1st level hatchling dragon up to 20th level vs 'standard' MM dragons and 20th level chracters?

[Relthar]

Vince and I both have subscriptions to Dragon and so both of us were quite pleased at having first the metallic dragons given a 20 level advancement and now the chromatics. Too bad we'll never likely see the 5 gem dragons given the same.

The Council of Wyrms campaign was written for 2nd edition AD&D rules. As such the dragon advancements in there were centered around 12 class levels, one for each age category of dragon. These did not match up in any way to the standard character class advancement from the PHB. There was one additional level, "H", to represent a newly hatched dragon. The only difference was in proficiencies possessed. Hit Dice and such were the same whether newly hatched or just plain age category 1 (10 HD for a 2nd edition gold dragon for example).

Now, in 3.5, the advancements presented in the two Dragon magazines for metallic and (most recently) chromatic dragons simply present a 20 level progression around the existing ECLs in the Monster Manual and Draconomicon. If you check the ECLs in either the MM or the Draconomicon for a red dragon against the red dragon advancement in Dragon #332, you'll see what I mean. For example, a wyrmling red dragon is ECL 11. The 11th level of the 20 level progression has "Wyrmling" in the special column, signifying that at this stage the character has all the abilities of a wyrmling red dragon as presented in the MM. There is no difference. It is the same information presented in different formats.

The only advantage to these 20 level progressions is to allow someone to play a dragon character in any campaign from 1st level on (vs having to start at ECL11 for a red dragon wyrmling, for example), and give a more gradual acquisition of power rather than having large gaps in "levels" due to the basic ECLs. You could say that some of the early levels before reaching full wyrmling represent the dragon fresh from the egg, I suppose.

How do the 20 level progressions for dragons stack up against 20 levels of basic character classes? The same as any other monster with a level adjustment and HD > 1. They will be somewhat weaker than standard characters of comparable level, but should be roughly equivalent if equipped with the same monetary amount of gear.

The only problem I have with the 20 level progressions is that they did not continue them all the way to Great Wyrm (which would, admittedly, put some in the ECL 50+ range). The more powerful dragons only get to age category Young before ECL 20, while the weaker ones can make it to Juvenile. WotC has only done one epic level ECL chart for dragons, and that was in the Dragon magazine article that presented ECLs for all the critters in the MM (the article pre-dated Savage Species).

[Jona]

Mmm that's interesting, I'll have to pick it up now just for that. Gald to see that the 'basic' 20 level advancement doesn't over shadow 'traditional' character advancement. But I am glad to see that you could do something like that in a 1st level game and not have to worry about it to much, hell maybe this is a bit of a leader to doing CoW in 3.5, which would rock in my opinion.

[Relthar]

Vince and I have been wrestling with converting our CoW characters to 3.5 for quite some time. The half-dragons are easy, the kindred became much easier with the the Draconomicon. But we still haven't fully figured out how we want to handlesuch things as the age category 3 gold dragon-mage (CoW kit that replaced a dragon's natural spell-like abilities with wizard spellcasting). Converting directly, he'd be a young gold dragon wizard 5 (ECL 25). Stuff like this begins to raise questions about the wide array of ECLs the group would have when all is said and done.

If an official 3.5 version of the Council of Wyrms setting is ever published I will be doing the extremely happy dance. ;D

[Keikan300]

HA... I knew that holding onto my CoW character sheet would pay off for me.

I still have the character sheet tucked away for safe keeping.